Surrounding Dr. Robotnik's main base of operations in Sonic '06, White Acropolis is a snowy (and avalanche-prone) mountain range, with scattered pine trees rising over frozen lakes and bottomless chasms. Being Eggman's fortress, the place is swarming with Egg Gunners and other robots, as well as towering searchlights and laser fences on every approach. The Doctor's prison complex and "Solaris prototype" time machine are housed here, although the Egg Carrier's hanger lies elsewhere, in Aquatic Base.

Shadow's Story

Shadow's opening sequence sees him contacted by GUN HQ, to respond to an SOS signal from one of its agents in White Acropolis. Storming the place in typical explode-y fashion, the black hedgehog sweeps through veritable armies of Egg Gunners to fulfil his mission.

Shadow starts off running down the same slopes that Sonic later snowboards. At the same time, the GUN agent he's been sent to rescue - who turns out to be Rouge the Bat - is attempting to sneak out on her own by fleeing along the canyon walls. The final segment sees Shadow driving an Armed Buggy to blow up enough of Robotnik's searchlights that they can escape safely.

S Rank Tips

It is possible to get the S Rank requirement in Shadow's mission on level score alone, and go over 20,000 points beyond the requirement with proper ring bonuses. To accomplish this, three key things must be kept in mind:

Bash every enemy on the screen. And keep in mind the occasional defeat-of-enemy-leader-wipes-out-its-group combo; do these fast for maximum points.

Searchlights. Your key to victory. Defeating the enemies that spawn when you're "caught" by the searchlight are a good source of points. And in Rouge's section & in the final segment, you can destroy a searchlight for 1,000 points too.

Don't forget the three rainbow rings in the first section either. Or easily collapsible towers worth 10 points.

But, this is very time-consuming (kiss any time bonus goodbye for taking around 20 minutes to do this), and the fact that one death wipes your entire score up to that point will be even more frustrating when almost a half-hour of progress disappears into the abyss you just fell down in when getting to that searchlight by the gates. So be careful there.

But there is an alternative:

Gun Buggy in the center rock of the final section for the win. If you go through the level with a good speed, getting some points with say, rainbow rings and a breather for some enemies, you can get to the final segment with time to spare. Time which you'll spend catching the nearest buggy and moving to to center rock in the area that includes a searchlight. From that area, you can take out all of the searchlights splicklity-splack with the rockets and net a time bonus that can propel you to 50,000 points, if you can orientate yourself good and quickly (On the two rocks leading up to the center rock, take out a searchlight positioned easily for destroying).

Sonic's Story

Distracted by the boss fight against Silver in Soleanna Castle Town, Sonic is unable to prevent Eggman from recapturing Princess Elise. Fleeing the city, the fat scientist leaves a holographic message with Knuckles, offering to release the Princess if Sonic brings the blue Chaos Emerald to his base in White Acropolis. Even though Tails correctly diagnoses the ransom as a transparent trap, Sonic speeds off to the hideout, intending to simply break Elise out.

The level starts with Sonic snowboarding down the mountain slopes, eventually being pursued by a giant rolling snowball. The subsequent standard platforming section includes a period controlling Tails, who must fly over various impassable chasms in order to open a blast door for Sonic to progress.

Team Sonic eventually breach into Eggman's facility, discovering the scientist and Elise on the other side of a glass barrier. As per Eggman's ransom, Sonic places the blue Chaos Emerald inside a machine as instructed - at which point the fat man flips a lever, activating his time machine and sending the heroes on a blind jump into the far future: to Crisis City.

Silver's Story

Blaze finally finds Silver moping around in Soleanna New City after Amy foiled his attempted assassination of Sonic. After a brief sermon from the cat on the acceptability of murder, they set off for Dr. Eggman's base - deciding that if Sonic's looking for the fat man, said fat man's hideout should at least teach them something about their adversary.

White Acropolis starts with Blaze smashing up the robots on the outer mountainside. Silver's sections then see him floating through the canyons and across Eggman's fortified snow plains, eventually reaching the base. After defeating Egg-Genesis, the duo recover the blue Chaos Emerald which Sonic deposited inside the time machine. Subsequent cutscenes show Elise and Amy (the hedgehog having also snuck into White Acropolis to find Sonic) escaping from Eggman's prison complex.